Photovoice Assignment
What is Photovoice? The purpose of this assignment is for students to capture a moment in their everyday life by taking a picture. The hope is that it evokes social change related to sustainability. Creativity was heavily encouraged to students, resulting in a diverse array of photos. To learn more about each photo and the story behind it, simply click on the photo.
Virginia Tech's First Sustainable Fashion Show
The Office of Sustainability at Virginia Tech created the First Sustainable Fashion Show. It was held in Squires Haymarket Theatre on April 18th, 2023 in part of our celebration of Earth Week. The Practicing Sustainability class collaborated on four outfits that appeared in the lineup. There were 3 main categories of the fashion show: handmade, thrifted, and locally sourced. Awards were given out at the end based on the audience's votes.
This handmade dress was modeled by Emily Casamento and designed by Lily Spear, Emma Babiec, Thomas Newsome, Emily Casamento, Annelise Miller, and Gayanthi Ilangarathna. They have used a base of paper bags and layered braided plastic shopping bags as their materials. The veil is also made of plastic shopping bags, layered on thin recycled fabric. This dress was designed to spread awareness on the need to reduce our plastic consumption, because millions of plastic bags end up in landfills or polluting our environment. It also serves to show how we can re-use materials in new, creative ways.
Thomas Newsome is modelling on behalf of the 7 designers in the class: Hannah Garbutt, Kristen Kim, Anna DiCarlo, Brooke Evans, Robert Marshall, and Chrishma Perera and to raise awareness for water pollution. This gown was made from recycled materials, including a bodice made from paper bags and glued on can tabs, a long skirt is made from plastic bags and a top is made from pearls with sleeves featuring a crocodile tulle. This piece resembles a furious jellyfish emerging from the ocean, representing what our waters will become if ocean pollution continues.
Ellie Anderson is modeling on behalf of designers: Taylor Umbarger, Caroline Witte, Hunter Cutting, Kora Kane, Elimma Anguolu, Lily Espino, and Kelly Galway. This look is called “Building a More Sustainable Future”. Inspired by interior design students, this outfit incorporates materials that are unable to be used in commercial design because they’ve been deemed unsustainable or not up to code. The designers wanted to repurpose these materials and highlight the waste generated in the building and construction industries. Components of this outfit include upholstery, laminate, and carpet attached to a secondhand button down.
Mars has on a pathwork sweatsuit made of scrap fabric materials. The idea was showcase how a popular fast fashion trend like patchwork can easily be handmade in a sustainable way - it’s a sweatsuit without the sweat shop! Outfit was designed by Mars Eagleson, Amber Fleming, Ellie Anderson, Anna Capper, Abigail Peck, and Kyla Given.
"With this exhibition we wanted to create a hands on opportunity for everyone to get together and have creative independence over their outfits. We asked each of the four groups to come up with a story behind their outfit and everyone had such amazing ideas and creations. The sustainable fashion show was such a unique experience that we hope continues on in the years to come!"
-- Caroline Witte and Ellie Anderson, Exhibition Group Leaders
Research Paper
Another project the class started was writing a group research paper. Our group paper is a combination of two topics we derived from the course content that the class felt was the most relevant to sustainability. The circular economy and environmental justice are two topics we studied separately, however, we realized they are deeply connected. Our paper examines the relationship between the circular economy (CE) and environmental justice (EJ). We did this by investigating what aspects of the CE foster EJ and what aspects of the CE leads to environmental injustice. We also are looking into limits and barriers of the implementation of CE and EJ activities and future research directions and identified gaps.
So far, we have made substantial progress on the research paper. We are using a systematic literature review approach. We started the process with a class discussion of relevant themes from the course to narrow down the topic of our paper. Dr. Galappaththi and group leaders (Thomas and Hannah) then developed the research topic and questions based on the themes discussed in class. We then created search strings with the class to use to sample articles from two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The entire class participated in screening the articles based on an inclusion and exclusion criteria group leaders and Dr. Galappaththi created. As a class we then coded all included articles and did a general analysis to extract some of our key findings. Co-authors are now in the process of data analysis and writing the paper.
Research Question: What are the ways circular economy is/can influence environmental justice?
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What is a circular economy in the context of environmental justice?
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What elements of circular economy foster environmental justice?
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What elements of a circular economy lead to environmental injustice?
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What needs to be done (i.e., gaps) to make a circular economy more environmentally just and sustainable?
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"Working on this paper provided an opportunity to be collaborative as a class as well as showcasing the knowledge that we have gained from the Pathways to Sustainability minor. As a group leader, I was able to use my experience with previous literature reviews to help guide the class and foster new ideas throughout the process. It was exciting to bounce ideas around the entire class to come up with a research topic and I can not wait to see the final results!"
-- Thomas Newsome, Research Paper Group Leader
"I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be a group leader for the class paper. As a group leader, I was able to help develop the research topic and questions based on the student’s input. Our study involves examining the intersection of the circular economy and environmental justice - two main themes we dove into over the course of the semester. I am so excited to see the final product of the paper knowing that everyone in the class contributed to it in some way!"
-- Hannah Garbutt, Research Paper Group Leader
